


John’s Last Vow

by sherlock221Bismymuse



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Mycroft loves his brother, Reunion Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-24 14:11:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14956139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlock221Bismymuse/pseuds/sherlock221Bismymuse
Summary: Set post TRF. There is a human form walking around in London that sometimes eats listlessly and sleeps restlessly and answers to the name of Dr John Watson. But there is no one living inside it anymore.





	1. Please Sherlock, please don’t be dead.

There is a human form walking around in London that sometimes eats listlessly and sleeps restlessly and answers to the name of Dr John Watson. But there is no one living inside it anymore.

It is hollow and colourless and its eyes may look at you but they do not see you. They recognize only one shape and they search for it everywhere. The lips remember only one name and they call for it day and night.

_I love you Sherlock. Please …..please….._

The human form visits a gravesite every week and looks at the headstone as though the heat of its tears and the sheer intensity of its desire will cause the dead to return.

_Please Sherlock, please don’t be dead._

_._

_._

And then one day the universe plays a joke on the human form and sends him his miracle.

.

.

He is walking down the usual street, unlocking the familiar door, walking up the well- worn stairs, opening the door to his…..their flat and going in, bracing his heart for the daily feeling of a pit in his stomach and a howling in his lungs at the sight of the empty flat and the daily reminder that there is no one standing at the window playing the violin, because he is under the headstone. There is no one sleeping on the sofa, because he is lying six feet under. There will be no one in the morning to drink the second cup of tea he makes every single day because………..and just then he sees someone sitting in the living room.

So much thinner, pale as a ghost. Curly black hair, long fingers restless, eyes trying to deduce, figuring out what would be the best way to shatter the illusion.

‘John?’ the shape of Sherlock says, hesitantly, gently. The inflection holding within it a thousand questions.

_How are you? Did you miss me? Are you happy to see me? Do you want me back in your life? Do you know how long I have waited for this? Do you ………._

But all questions die on his lips when the army doctor who survived the war on Afghanistan has fainted dead away. Sherlock scrambles up from the sofa and catches him just before he hits the floor.

He puts his coat under his head, get a glass of water and sits next to him on the floor and waits for him to recover. As he looks at John and notices the increased greying of his hair, the sickly pallor of his skin, he knows that they have both paid a heavy price for the lives he saved.

***********************************************************

_Sherlock has been working hard to dismantle Moriarty’s network. He finds that there is nothing he can do without seeing a shadow of how it was with John. When he eats he remembers the toast and tea that his flatmate would make him eat. When he sleeps he remembers his partner pleading with him to get some rest. When he comes out of his Mind Palace he is startled every time to not find the blogger sitting in front of him with a book, waiting patiently for him to emerge._

_But he carries on. He chants JohnJohnJohnJohnJohnJohn as he kills, as he is tortured, as he runs, as he hides._

_He feels sick to the stomach when he thinks of what John must be suffering in his absence but he knows that he would pay any price, absolutely tearing apart the universe if he could, as long as John lives._

_It has been the most difficult game he has undertaken and every single night he has chanted the one name which is the reason he died and the reason he wants to stay alive. The one force which is holding him together at a molecular level. The one person who is so much a part of who he is that he has been re-organized in his very cells and atoms. He is the oxygen in his lungs and the electricity in his synapses._

_He is the tears in his eyes and the dreams in his sleep._

_Even in his nightmares the body falling from the roof and bleeding out on the street below has a different face. He himself fell but in his nightmares it is John who died. And when he wakes up in a terror fuelled sweat, he remembers that John is alive and is calmed._

_And then finally, FINALLY one day it is over and he can go back._

_He waits till John has gone out for a walk, then he lets himself into 221 B and waits._

************************************************

John wakes up and looks at Sherlock. He gets up and dusts himself off and walks to the kitchen. Sherlock is baffled by this lack of response and follows him.

‘John? _’_ he says again and reaches out to touch him on the shoulder. At the touch John flinches like he has been burnt, his eyes wide with terror and mouth open in a gasp.

He had thought this was one of his regular hallucinations but …………he reaches out to touch him back and ‘It’s me John’, Sherlock says.

John’s face changes from horror to relief to blind rage.

_Has this been some kind of sick joke??!_

He stands there with his fists clenching, his brain spiralling, the very planet beneath his feet careening off its axis.

_Sherlock was dead_. Sherlock was alive.

_Sherlock was buried in the grave_. Sherlock was standing in the kitchen.

_Sherlock was ashes and dust_. Sherlock was touching him.

.

.

.

John had been grieving a man who had not died but just _abandoned_ him.

_He had left him alone and let him think he was dead???_

‘John’, Sherlock started to speak again but John raised his hand and cut him off.

‘DO NOT speak to me Sherlock. Do not say anything to me. EVER AGAIN.’ And with that John turned around, grabbed his coat and left the house.

The door slammed shut and in a few seconds the downstairs one too.


	2. He never expected to be left behind.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How long would forgiveness take and would Sherlock survive the wait?

Sherlock stood there stunned.

He had expected John to be angry, maybe even throw a punch at him, shout and rage but he never expected this.

He never expected to be left behind.

Mrs. Hudson had heard the shouting and the door slamming and she came up the stairs. She realized what must have happened.

‘Sherlock,’ she said softly, patting his arm. ‘Give him time. He has grieved for you every single moment of the past two years. I know you did it to keep him alive and his body is living but his heart left with you when you fell. Give him time my boy’.

*******************************

_Ever since the day he met John in the St Bart’s lab Sherlock had become Sherlock &John. He had died for him and come back only on the strength of being able to be with him again._

_If half of him was torn from him, how would he fill the emptiness?_

_What wall could hold in the howling winds of rage and fear that swept through his mind?_

_What landing would break his fall into the abyss of despair?_

_His very molecules were rent asunder and the emptiness inside him threatened to swallow him whole._

*********************************

Greg came over the next evening. He looked quite stricken.

Sherlock had met him in the car park the earlier evening and he had been shocked to see that the genius detective was alive but unconditionally delighted. He had given him a warm hug but then his first question had also been about John.

When he saw Sherlock’s face freeze he realized how things must have gone. That things had gone badly.

Then John had turned up at his flat last evening and today Greg had come to 221B at John’s request.

_Greg, please do this for me. Please get my things from 221B and let me stay with you for a few days._

Greg had understood the betrayal John felt but it broke his heart to be the one to tell this to Sherlock.

He had seen Sherlock walk through hell and back during his drug addiction days. He had seen him change under the influence of the good doctor in his life. He knew for sure that Sherlock was a great man and he knew in his heart that he could be a good one but he simply did not know if he would he be strong enough to bear this blow.

The detective who came in from the cold sat in his chair, unmoving, as Greg explained haltingly why he was there. Sherlock sat and stared at John’s chair for the next quarter of an hour while Greg moved around upstairs trying to figure out what to pack.

When Greg finally came down, he stopped next to Sherlock and asked him softly, “Sherlock, have you eaten at all today? Can I get you something?”

When there was no reply, he sighed and went downstairs.

Mrs. Hudson’s door was open and she looked out as soon as she heard his footfall. She raised her eyebrows in query and Greg gave a helpless shrug. Mrs. Hudson pursed her lips and went back in.

She went up a few minutes later with a bowl of soup and some pudding. She looked at Sherlock and her heart almost broke.

_Yes he should not have deceived John and she had seen how broken John had been. But how long would forgiveness take and would Sherlock survive the wait?_

She sat by him for half an hour and he did not move nor look at her.

Finally she went back to her flat and for only the second time in her life she sent a text to a number which she knew would reach the only man who could throw a lifeline.


	3. Emotions are a chemical defect brother mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft was skilled in starting and stopping wars between countries but there is no war as savage as the one waged on a broken heart. Where the battlefield and the soldier and the wound and the healing and the victory and the loss are all one. Where tears can burn you and a cold shoulder can turn everything to ashes.

Mycroft came over within 20 minutes of her message and sat in the living room with Sherlock. He did not say a word though his face was etched with worry and concern and sympathy.

He was never one for field work but he knew exactly what his brother had suffered to do what they had both believed was the best and possibly only way to make sure that the three snipers did not end any of the lives they were tasked with.

_Would giving John some hint have jeopardized the entire operation?_

_Would John have stayed and managed to put up a believable act of mourning?_

_What if he had not managed and everything had been in vain?_

_Would Sherlock have survived the loss of the doctor?_

_Would Mycroft have survived living in a world without his brother?_

The baby brother he had looked after from the day he came into this world and who he had taught and protected and fought with and helped.

_The only thing on this Earth he probably loved more than Queen and Country?_

He felt utterly helpless today and simply could not get himself to remind Sherlock what he had tried to teach him ever since he could remember.

_Emotions are a chemical defect brother mine. Alone protects us._

Mycroft was skilled in starting and stopping wars between countries but there is no war as savage as the one waged on a broken heart. Where the battlefield and the soldier and the wound and the healing and the victory and the loss are all one. Where tears can burn you and a cold shoulder can turn everything to ashes.

Eventually Mycroft’s thinking got too loud for Sherlock and he got up and went into his bedroom, slamming the door shut.

Mycroft made some phone calls and left after making arrangements for someone to be watching the flat and front door round the clock besides the usual surveillance.

Every hour of every day and every night was now filled with danger.

*****************************************

Despite the surveillance and the watching and the care, of course they could not hope to contain someone who was not only a genius, but who had recently polished his skills in the throes of a deadly game for slipping into shadows and fleeing through cracks in walls and throwing off any trail.

Add to this the raging burning hollow inside him that re-opened every murmur of addiction in every fibre of his being till the song became too loud to bear and Sherlock had escaped his flat to find his dealer.

The chant of JohnJohnJohnJohn was drowning under the rising crescendo and clash of drums saying CocaineCocaineCocaineCocaine.

4 beats with every cycle of his heart. LubDub LubDub. Co Caine Co Caine. Demanding. Insisting. Pounding into his veins and pulsing behind his eyes.

Finally, finally……with trembling hands and desperate teeth he tied the tourniquet and the needle hissed into his steaming blood and slowly the icebergs floated through the hot ocean and the pounding reduced and the shouting muted and the raging red seas turned foamy white and deceptively calm.

By the time it was obvious he was missing and they finally found him, many a Titanic had crashed to its doom against many an iceberg inside his turbulent blood.

He was barely breathing and the seasoned paramedics who took him along with sirens wailing and hands pumping his chest had the look in their eyes of having seen how this particular story ends every time.

.

.

But the universe plays one more joke and this man who no longer wishes to live is somehow not dead.

 


	4. I want you to listen to my vow carefully

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John just looked at Sherlock and when he saw the state he was in, silent hot tears spilled out of his eyes; more tears than he had cried even when he thought his best friend was dead, because what he saw in front of him could have been a mirror.  
> A ravaged mess of a man barely alive.

Mycroft sat at his bedside, stoically waiting for him to wake up. Wondering how long he would have a brother to call his own and how he would face the world when one day the call would come, not from a hospital ward but from a morgue.

He has just come in from meeting John Watson. He had explained to him the reason for the Fall which Sherlock never had a chance to tell him about. He had told him about the snipers, the torture, the terror, the hiding and the desperation.

He had asked John, no, he had _urged_ John to recognize what Sherlock has done as the ultimate act of love.

_He died for you John. If you say the word he will live for you._

_If not then I fear that his fall was never truly over and this landing will finally kill him._

With that he had left.

John had stared at the door for what seemed like hours and then broken down and sobbed as Greg held him.

***********************************

On the third evening of his vigil, Mycroft was rewarded by the sight of Sherlock opening his eyes. As he pressed the button to call for the nurse, Sherlock looked at him in despair and begged him in a rasping voice, “Please let me go My. Don’t bring me back again. Please. I don’t want to…….I can’t….”

And just then the door opened and Greg and John were standing there.

John, with his left hand clenching and opening, his face haggard and un-readable.

Sherlock struggled to sit up and Mycroft helped raise the bed.

John just looked at Sherlock and when he saw the state he was in, silent hot tears spilled out of his eyes; more tears than he had cried even when he thought his best friend was dead, because what he saw in front of him could have been a mirror.

A ravaged mess of a man barely alive.

_Oh, what a heavy price they had both paid for the punishment of going on living alone._

But they were running out of currency now and John needed to save them both. He stepped into the room and took a deep breath and spoke softly but clearly.

“Sherlock, I know you don’t believe in promises but I know you believe in me. In us.

And if there is to be an ‘us’, I want you to listen to my vow carefully.

I will not repeat it. And I will never break it.

If you ever use drugs again I will leave you forever and…… if you die again I will not wait to follow you.”

.

.

There is a thick silence in the room broken only by the machines. Beep beep. Beep beep.

All the men in the room are holding their breath.

They have reached a precipice and they are looking into an endless emptiness.

Cold, infinite, dark and true.

Time and space are warped at the edge as though being pulled out of shape by a black hole.

They dare not blink in case they miss the end of the known universe.

Has it been a few seconds or a few eons?

And then Sherlock sobs and holds out his hands to John, palms up. ‘Forgive me John. Never again. Please….’

And then somehow John is standing right next to him, holding him, hugging him and kissing him and murmuring ‘I love you Sherlock, I love you so much. So much. Please, please don’t ever leave me alone again.’

Mycroft and Greg look at them and at each other and let out a shaky breath.

They smile at each other tentatively and sincerely hope that their corner of the universe has finally run out of jokes.


End file.
